Best Minds (for Allen Ginsburg) I've seen the best minds of my generation zoned out on Windows gone Microsoft in the head and lost like cattle in the perimeters of happiness without a clue as to the way back home; who loiter in the shopping malls at lunch hour pressing thumb and forefinger against Tommy Hilfiger casual wear, who can't find spare change from their fashionable pockets for street musicians or sympathy for bag ladies collecting Pepsi cans form the garbage. I've seen the best minds of my generation zoned out in front of Seinfeld reruns secretly admiring George Costanza and tolerating unimaginable TV commercials selling garbage for the mind and body, who finally, frustrated and angry, can only rage at the remote control for not being able to make the entire world go mute. I've seen the best minds browbeat by bureaucratic barbarism chained to desks and ergonomic chairs and losing valuable days of their lives staring at fax machines and waiting, waiting for a missive from Montreal or New York so they can take one step forward or backward or maybe nowhere at all, who settle for new Japanese cars with staggering options instead of freedom from career paths etched in the ethereal circuitry of the internet where gigabytes of information wait to pounce like sleepless lions on the unaware clueless victims and then drill codework into the left hemisphere of the brain, who forgot the lessons of Vietnam and Nixon and Mulroney and Mars but instead steal away to ClubMed to fake euphoria while frying their pale skin beneath the cancerous sun while sipping white zombies and listening to watered down reggae music; who came home to the city to chow down at fashionable ethnic restaurants selling artificial foods instead of home grown organic fare with lots of fresh herbs from the garden, who deal out moments of their lives like cards in a stacked game of chance, who arm wrestle the stock quotations in the Daily News, who stare glassy-eyed at the video lottery machines in smoky bars at 8 pm, who squelch even harmless daydreams with easy listening music or drown themselves in espresso and cappuccino, who retire from challenges of intellect for the safety of stadium spectator sports, who ignore the kids starving in Africa and Asia but wonder if there's profit in selling soap and powdered milk to emerging markets, who sift through junkmail looking for cryptic clues to the meaning of life as if the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes has some answer in the fine print, some respite from the hollowness felt in the bones of loners. I have seen the best minds of my time stop trying to react to impossible, intrusive goals and settle down to dream the dream of Calvin Klein underwear men and women, who wake up late at night trying to remember what crusade it was that sent them shouting in the streets, who once knew instinctively the Gulf War was never won but a lot of innocent children were killed by your side, who almost had the courage to say the deficit was not as important as the destitute, who almost stood up to the racists and the rich and the right wing zealots, who grew up and trusted the integrity of their banks and senators and bosses at the corporation and opted for new taste as in microbreweries as a sign that they were free-thinking and hip. They still walk among us and rule and remind their children that they almost went to Woodstock and they really did change the world and they believe in the life force of the planet and admit that somebody's killing it but it isn't them. The best minds still have beating hearts but the blood fails to find its way to the sleeping brain cells that store revolution like withered flowers in the secret place at the very top of the spinal column. Yes, I've seen the best of them turn shiny and successful and boastful of boats and Bay Street, blind with allegiance to anything but themselves, lost in a haze of Bacardi ads in magazines and the possibility of retiring early with the goal of doing nothing at all but maybe play golf and take naps and wait for lodging in retirement communities. Better for them to rage against the glitzy dying of the light, the tedium of vicarious tabloid living. Better to froth at the mouth and shout out love like Milton Acorn in a Toronto Park. Better to recite four letter words and get arrested like Ginsburg in San Francisco or better to sit in the woods alone and contemplate the sutra of deer tracks, and wintergreen root, the succulent star moss and sifting mist of spruce trees. Far too many of us have not gone crazy but remained sane and stable and safe within the womb of the twentieth century. But the howl of young idealism will not go away-- it's there inside your heart; it's there sneaking up at you at the subway stop at Bathhurst and Yonge; it's there looking at you from the bubbles in the watercooler near the photocopier; it's there in the upper right hand corner of the picture of a car wreck on the front page of the paper; it's there living in your closet with your favourite blue shirt; it's there, a lost soul in the carburetor of your Lawnboy mower; it's there in your voicemail like a ghost; it's there on the other line while you sort out problems with the Purolater man; it's sneaking up on you when you least expect it, watching a rental video of Jurassic Park 2; reminding you that there's still time, still time for the best minds of our generation to give back instead of just taking. Ginsburg was right: "Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul." by: Lesley Choyce